Festival of Food and Wine: Toowoomba Carnival of Flower ‘strategic plan’ adopted, but festival future still cloudy
The council may have adopted its strategic plan for the future of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers, but there is still no clarity on one of its signature events. Here’s when we should get an answer:
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The future of the beleaguered Festival of Food and Wine at this year’s Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers might not be known for several weeks, despite a council vote that would dictate the direction of the tourism event for the next five years.
Councillors voted at Tuesday’s committee meetings to endorse the new Carnival of Flowers Five-Year Strategic Plan, which shifted the focus to growing the event’s profile to a national and even international audience.
The plan identified locals, short-drive tourists, group bookings, garden enthusiasts and food and wine lovers as the target markets for the carnival.
Notably, outgoing co-ordinator Kate Scott said the focus would be on reducing the carnival’s cost to council over time, with the 2024 edition underwritten to the tune of $1.3m.
“We want to not just look at what we’re doing for the state, we want to drag it back into what we’re doing for our Toowoomba region and achieving financial stability,” she said during the meeting.
“We actually know that at the moment, council’s investing about $1 million in Carnival each year — we don’t want to exceed that, we want to see that reduced.”
The high-level document didn’t outline what the Festival of Food and Wine would look like this year, fuelling speculation the event would be scaled back or heavily reshaped to reduce its financial cost to the council.
The saga started after the council released a sponsorship prospectus that didn’t feature it as an opportunity, with an event titled “Small Plates and Chilled Local Tunes” replacing it.
The planned ticketed Queens Park event portion of the carnival doesn’t have a sponsor yet, after the meeting revealed both Grand Central and People First Bank (formerly Heritage) had again signed on for the floral parade and parkland entertainment respectively.
Councillor James O’Shea said further details would be revealed once a tender was awarded for an event co-ordinator, which would be finalised before the official launch at the end of April.
“That strategic plan doesn’t point directly to say that there will be a festival, that there will be a teddy bears picnic, whatever it may be, but it’s obviously all centred around the event,” he said.
“Two things that came out of that strategic plan was, firstly regional activation for the Carnival of Flowers and secondly, it draws back to a particular focus on around how the local economy benefits.
“We obviously went out to tender, and that tender closed just recently actually.
“Once they go through that tender process, it’ll be looked at as to what the food, wine and music entertainment event of the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers looks like.
“The obvious answer to that is before April 28, which is the launch day of the carnival.”
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Originally published as Festival of Food and Wine: Toowoomba Carnival of Flower ‘strategic plan’ adopted, but festival future still cloudy
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